Last year, June 26 to be exact, Jesse Williams was en route to the BET awards in Los Angeles to collect an award. He was given a day off from filming Jacob’s Ladder in Atlanta to attend. Having not thought about his acceptance speech until the day of the ceremony, he jotted down some notes on his iPhone on the plane on his way there. Critically, though, Jesse wasn’t there to pick up a best actor award or in fact anything to do with his trade, but instead to receive a much higher honour – the Humanitarian Award.

His hurriedly penned speech – a rousing commentary on the new civil rights movement, institutionalised racism and the appropriation of black culture – went instantly viral, clocking up thousands of tweets in mere minutes and becoming the talking point of the four-hour ceremony. The following day the actor, who previously was known to most as Dr Jackson on the long-running medical drama Grey’s Anatomy, was featured in mainstream press around the country, and thrust into the spotlight, so much so that he logged off the internet for ten days afterwards, not wanting to engage in the hype.

This wasn’t, however, a case of some soapbox speech or celebrity bandwagoning that many have bemoaned in the past. Jesse has been a campaigner for civil rights for most of his life. In fact, he wanted to be a civil rights attorney as a child long before acting came his way. In 2014, following the shooting of Michael Brown, he headed to Ferguson to protest with the rest of the Black Lives Matter campaigners.

“I dedicated my life to doing [civil rights activism] anyway and now I’ve just added another job to that, which is being on television and in films,” Jesse says over the phone from LA, during his lunch break on the set of Grey’s Anatomy. “I didn’t wake up one day and think, ‘Hey, I’ve got this platform now, what can I do with it?’ I was already doing it, and then I got a platform.

“It actually started for me in childhood, being poor and black in 80s Chicago, which didn’t allow you to have blinders on,” he says. “My parents were politically active, and made sure to always speak to me about a general sense of self-respect and awareness, and an understanding of oppression, systematic discrimination and abuses. They wanted me to be prepared for how the world works, so that I wasn’t stunned when I was older. I saw police abusing people, beating the shit out of black people – this was gangland, crack-era 80s Chicago – and it let me know that the real world is harsh.”

"I saw police abusing people, beating the shit out of black people – this was gangland, crack-era 80s Chicago – and it let me know that the real world is harsh.”

As a teenager, Jesse, who was born into a bi-racial family, moved to “the white suburbs in Massachusetts”, something he credits as a “big cultural shift’’ that further impacted his understanding of discrimination. “It showed me the level to which geography, on top of race and class, can dictate your life expectations,” he says. “That just because I moved to the white suburbs I had way more opportunities that had nothing to do with what I had earned – it was simply being in a different zip code.

“My school wasn’t broken up and abandoned with ten-year-old textbooks, under-resourced teachers and police patrolling the hallways. Instead, I had a small classroom and sustained teachers, so I could see the disparity and that it’s grossly unfair from a young age. That always stayed with me.”

This impact became apparent in Jesse’s first job, as a teacher of American, African and African-American history in low-income public schools after graduating from Temple University. The career left an indelible mark on him, and has informed some of the solutions that he feels could aid better understanding of black history, crucial to the healing of some of America’s scars. “No-one is doing us any favours by putting up a poster of Martin Luther King Jr,” he says. “People need to realise that we’re directly connected to the invention of civilisation.”

Teaching African history in schools is “as important as it has ever been”, Jesse says, and is something that should be taught to all students, regardless of their race or ethnicity. “I don’t view it as just helpful for African-Americans alone,” he continues. “It would completely change the make-up of this nation and the world if people actually learned where black people came from and realised that Africans contributed directly to the foundations of civilisation, architecture, irrigation, science, math and medicine. The first renaissance men were in Africa; it didn’t start in Athens or in Rome.

“I don’t view it as a ‘nice thing’ to add for the black community specifically. It’s something that has been hidden from all of us, and it would be really helpful for people to realise that we have value in this world and we’re a part of its history.”

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“It would completely change the make-up of this nation and the world if people actually learned where black people came from and realised that Africans contributed directly to the foundations of civilisation."

No-one of sound mind could deny his points, particularly in light of a new administration that seems hell-bent on turning “alternative facts” – otherwise known as lies – into truths. An accurate portrayal of history and an acknowledgment of the systematic racism that has existed in the US for centuries would, at the very least, be a step in the right direction. But as Jesse points out, it will take a lot more than that to slay the beast.

“White supremacy, white patriarchy and people just being awful as a vile and domineering force is something that’s surely got to work itself out. It’s not the responsibility or obligation of women to topple patriarchy, for example, or of black people to topple white supremacy. That’s not going to get fixed until they start self-reflecting and fixing themselves.”

In between his day job on Grey’s Anatomy, Jesse also sits on the board of the Advancement Project, a multi-racial civil rights organisation working to bring equality and just democracy to those most in need, with a particular emphasis on policy and voter protection. “It’s a project that quietly goes to communities that need resources and supports them legally and helps push litigation up through the courts,” Jesse says. “They do this all over the country, states that are battling about certain Americans having the right to vote or being blocked from voting, and the project plays a pivotal role in that.”

"Hollywood’ doesn’t really mean much. We don’t all go to meetings together or all vote the same. I’m sure that plenty of people in Hollywood voted for Trump!"

Then there’s Question Bridge, for which Jesse is an executive producer, a transmedia project that aims to redefine black male identity, by allowing black men from diverse backgrounds to ask questions and create a dialogue around the subject of self, and hopefully dispel a few stereotypes in the process. There’s Scholly – an app that he works on with founder Christopher Gray – which helps connect students with available scholarship money and has so far unlocked access to over $70 million worth of funds. There’s Ebroji, his GIF keyboard, which creates a visual language that includes “black, brown and LGBTQ faces to further humanise people that are otherwise marginalised.” And that’s before even mentioning the documentaries that Jesse has produced, including Stay Woke: The Black Lives Matter Movement and America Divided, executive produced by his Grey’s Anatomy boss Shonda Rhimes, Common and Norman Lear. It’s a wonder that he finds time to eat or sleep, let alone act.

Jesse’s activism work informs every part of his life though, which leads me to ask him how it affects the roles that he chooses in his acting career. “It’s not like a big banner that I have above my door that I look to,” he says, “but I think that it’s something that is in retrospect reflected in the choices that I make. I’m on a hugely popular television show that is the pioneer in television for diversity and maturity on screen, for letting black, brown, Asian, Latina, gay, queer and disabled characters be in leading roles, without being stereotypes.”

It’s no secret that Hollywood as a whole has been criticised for its lack of diversity, as well as inaccurate portrayals of people of colour and minorities. “It’s a very real problem,” Jesse says. “But also there’s no such thing as Hollywood as a monolithic group. Some members of Hollywood crank out absolute shite that is destructive and completely riddled with stereotypes and is designed to provoke or be intellectually lazy. But then in the same building somebody could be producing tremendous material that is forward-thinking and inclusive – that could even be on the same network! ‘Hollywood’ doesn’t really mean much. We don’t all go to meetings together or all vote the same. I’m sure that plenty of people in Hollywood voted for Trump!

“People thought that they had to whitewash every movie to make people go and see it, but that’s statistically bullshit,” he says. “The more diverse a movie is the more money it makes – statistically.”

"We’re still cranking out amazing work and hoping to be praised by the system, yet we’re constantly overlooked while white mediocrity is celebrated.”

In his BET speech Jesse noted how black culture and black entertainment is a hugely profitable export for the States, and he’s right. In music last year three of the top five most popular albums, according to Nielsen music, were by black artists, while films such as Fences and Moonlight have picked up awards at most major ceremonies this year. Hell, even some of our biggest memes of internet culture that have trickled down into mainstream vernacular are born from black culture – “Bye Felicia”, anyone? So, why is there not more done to safeguard it?

“Anti-blackness is policy in America. That’s not hyperbole,” Jesse says. “There are policies designed to destroy black people, black bodies, black safety, but then also our most valuable exports – our culture, our trends, our music and expressions – are an absolutely defining light of what America is. There’s sports, music, fashion – we invented the blues and country music and rap – and a lot of these things that define American ‘cool’. But there’s no incentive to protect that. History directly goes out of its way to suppress and destroy black leaders and black movements that awaken people to have respect for themselves,” he says. “We’re still cranking out amazing work and hoping to be praised by the system and get their Grammys and Oscars and be acknowledged, yet we’re constantly overlooked while white mediocrity is celebrated.”

To read the rest of Jesse’s interview pick up Hunger issue 12, Stand For Something, out now. Buy here